What happened at General Synod?
Just the highlights
In the likely scenario that you had better things to do than watch every moment of General Synod on the live stream, and you don’t want to go back through and read through every daily summary posted on this blog, here are the headlines.
Unsurprisingly, much of Synod’s time was spent on matters of safeguarding.
Perhaps the biggest decision Synod had to make was on what was labelled ‘the future of church safeguarding.’ They were asked to choose between two models: ‘Model 3’ would set up a new, independent scrutiny body to oversee safeguarding—likened to an Ofsted for the church. ‘Model 4’ was more radical and would have seen the same independent scrutiny and also all of the paid safeguarding officers transferred to a different independent body. The questions this brought up were legally complex, and Synod compromised on a ‘Model 3.5’: they agreed to implement independent oversight and will do further work to establish whether independent delivery is possible.
Somewhat related to that, Synod gave final approval to the Clergy Conduct Measure. Replacing the much-hated Clergy Discipline Measure 2003, the CCM is hoped to be a better regime. At its core is a triage system: complaints will be separated into allegations of grievance, misconduct, and serious misconduct. The level of the allegation will determine how it is dealt with. That's an improvement on the CDM, which dealt with every allegation through the same system, regardless of the seriousness.
We should note, however, that the Rules and Code of Practice, which sit alongside the Measure and will dictate how it will work in practice, haven’t been signed off yet. Getting those right will determine whether the system is better or not.
In contrast to the last few years, only an hour was given this time to discussing Living in Love and Faith. There was an update from the Bishop of Leicester, lead bishop for LLF, and the Bishop of Gibraltar in Europe, chair of the Faith and Order Commission (the Church of England’s official theologians, if you like). They clarified that the reason no big decisions were being taken this time was because the House of Bishops asked the theologians to clear up a few sticky questions, and the theologians have thrown even more spanners in the works. It’s even unlikely to be ready for July. Expect the next big crunch to come next February.
Time was also spent revising the Mission and Pastoral Measure. That’s an incredibly important law impacting the church on the ground. Those steering it through Synod have said that they aim to reset the relationship between parishes and dioceses on matters of pastoral reorganisation, deployment of clergy, and closing churches. The new Measure is still very much in the drafting stage—big questions remain, particularly around who the diocese must consult when making proposals for changes or closures.
The biggest argument of the week came over the Bishops’ proposals to overhaul the Crown Nominations Commission (CNC). The CNC is the national committee that nominates diocesan bishops, and the House of Bishops wanted to change its procedures to make it easier for a candidate to get over the line. The big story of the debate was the House of Laity standing up against the House Of Bishops, rejecting all the proposals that would have given the (arch)bishops more power in choosing their colleagues.
The rejected proposals would have lowered the threshold for a nomination, given the archbishop a second vote in a deadlock, removed the secret ballot, and removed abstentions from the final tally—which would also have had the effect of lowering the threshold for a nomination.
In addition to the ongoing work on LLF, there’s a lot more work to be done on safeguarding, church governance, and clergy discipline. The very structure of the Church of England in the years ahead is being worked out at the moment. Don’t let that pass you by.